The present invention relates to a passport document wherein individualized data is mounted in the document in a secure and tamper-resistant manner.
Passport documents are used by most countries to establish the bearer's identity and to provide diplomatic protection when crossing borders or travelling in foreign jurisdictions. However, passport documents of the type currently in use are relatively insecure in that they can be modified by skilled forgers for use by individuals other than those to whom they were originally issued. For example, it can sometimes be difficult to detect the skillful removal and replacement of the photograph used in present U.S. passport documents.
In an attempt to overcome these difficulties and to provide a more secure and tamper-resistant passport document, it is desirable to use digital printing processes which would permit a single paper surface within the document to contain a photograph of the bearer, human-readable information such as name, birth date, birth place, etc. and machine readable encoded data which could be used by computer scanners at passport control points to provide quick call up of pertinent information about the bearer from a memory.
Unfortunately, this leads to a further difficulty in that passport booklets are produced in quantity in standard form. Specific data concerning the bearer is only added at the last moment when one specific booklet is being issued to an individual. However, no machines are presently available which can form all of the necessary information on a single page within a previously bound booklet. To implement such a process, it is therefore necessary to form the data on a separate data page which must then be permanently and nonremovably mounted within the passport booklet.
This process is, however, complicated by the fact that known methods for mounting such a single sheet are not adequate. For example, the standard for the location of machine readable data in a passport document requires the accurate positioning of the data within dimensional tolerances which simply cannot be achieved by many processes. In some methods, the resistance to forgers is not sufficient. In other cases, the heat of the imprinting process for the data either prevents the use of heat activated adhesives which might otherwise be used to mount the data sheet, or requires the use of high temperature adhesives. However, high temperatures cause further complications with other elements of the passport document such as removal of the gold leaf which is normally desirable on the cover of the passport.